Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Business processing using cryptography
Reexamination Certificate
1999-06-14
2003-05-20
Elisca, Pierre E. (Department: 3621)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Business processing using cryptography
C701S219000, C043S054100, C705S001100
Reexamination Certificate
active
06567792
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to the field of fishing. More particularly, the present invention relates to the field of commercial fishing and commercial fisheries management. More particularly still, the present invention relates to gathering, recording, analyzing, and reporting of data in the field of commercial fishing and commercial fisheries management.
2. Prior Art
Since ancient times, the pursuit of fishing has paid no heed to “the one that got away,” except in tavern tales and sea-faring novels. This traditional mindset persists today. Among fishermen, from solitary anglers to operators of commercial fishing vessels, the “catch”—those fish that are actually brought back—is the only thing that is ever accurately identified, sorted, counted, and recorded. Information is rarely kept, and more rarely reported, about fish that had been trapped, hooked, or netted, and then thrown back for being the wrong size, the wrong species, or in the wrong condition (such as egg-bearing females of certain species). As a result, information that could be noted by individual fishermen, and that might even be of great benefit to those same individual fishermen, as well as to the fishing industry as a whole, is customarily lost simply as a matter of standard practice. In general, there is currently no reliable “catch and release data” relative to the fishing industry from fishermen and no currently practical means of obtaining such data.
Further, information about where fish are caught, whether they are kept or released, is also traditionally held close. The location of an angler's fishing hole and a fishing boat captain's fishing ground have been given the status of trade secrets since time immemorial.
There were and are good reasons, grounded in competition for sport and for commercial purposes, for keeping secrets. From these rational concerns the traditions and standard practices of fishing have evolved. To a large extent, also, there have been practical reasons for fishermen not to take accurate note of details—in particular catch, release, and location data—having no immediate importance to them, while they are in the heat of battle with the sea, the weather, the wildlife, and the passage of time. Although some fishermen may write down some of this information, such notes are almost always kept in secret. The result of traditional secretiveness and standard practice among fishermen, however, is the loss of accurate information about fish stocks and the condition of fishing grounds. This remains so even in the present period, a time of dwindling stocks and endangered fishing grounds, when such information, if kept and used by an individual fisherman, could be used to increase the efficiency and profitability of that fisherman's own commercial enterprise. On a larger scale, the aggregation of such information is of vital importance to the effective management of fisheries and to the health and the very survival of the fishing industry. Nevertheless, the tradition of secrecy coupled with a mistrust of the ability of government agencies to manage fisheries, keeps such information from being effectively gathered. Furthermore, this mistrust of government regulation and management manifests itself in the reticence among fishermen to cooperate with the information-gathering efforts of government regulators and their agencies—such as regulation-mandated random spot-checks of individual fishing operations.
Currently, information is general and uncertain about fish stocks and the condition of fishing grounds as a whole, about the health and abundance (or lack of it) of the many commercial varieties, of their location in abundance or deficit, of their migration patterns, and of their breeding patterns, seasons, and efficiencies. The gathering of most of this vital information currently falls almost exclusively to a few public inspectors and private researchers. In states that support and control the fishing industry, state governments attempt to provide, within budgetary constraints, the inspection of and reporting on fishing operations and on the condition of fishing grounds and of fish stocks through variously named “departments of marine resources.” From time to time, this information may be augmented by the efforts of non-governmental fishing organizations—e.g., the FAO, which is part of the United Nations—and by the necessarily narrow interests of academic or institutional researchers. Currently, the limited data collected by these means, and the analysis of such data, form the sole basis of governmental regulation of the fishing industry. The trouble is that, relative to the size of the industry and the volume of information necessary to form the basis of valid judgments, the number of persons collecting such information is small, making the accumulation of a statistically significant volume of fishery-related data difficult or, arguably, impossible.
For example, the State of Maine currently depends on part-time volunteers, a few paid inspectors (primarily seeing catches as they are brought to port), and academic researchers for the gathering of information relative to lobster fishing, an industry carried on in Maine by as many as 6,000 fishing vessels operating over thousands of square miles in the Gulf of Maine. The fact that vessels are not generally available to these few information gatherers for their own use limits their effectiveness. Thus, these volunteers—and occasionally government-employed inspectors—usually operate aboard the vessels of commercial fishermen who, because of longstanding and growing mistrust of inspectors and regulators, may offer less than full cooperation and candor, and may even give misleading responses to inquiries. Further, even when such an information-gathering effort is augmented by that of institutional researchers, the additional information that can be applied specifically to the analysis of particular fish stocks in particular fishing grounds is meager because the focus of the research by these institutions often does not provide information that is useful for the commercial fishing industry. The resulting paucity of data is a contributing factor in the development of guidelines and policies that are generally not accepted by fishermen.
What is needed is a practical method for gathering fishery-industry-related data. What is further needed is such a method that is employable by an individual commercial fisherman at sea. What is yet further needed is such a method that will gather data from many individual fishermen, combine the data to a single fishery-related database, and generate reports useful to the commercial fishing industry. What is still yet further needed is such a method that will hold confidential certain data provided by an individual fisherman and provide the individual fisherman with confidential reports useful to the fisherman's enterprise.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a practical method for gathering fishery-industry-related data. It is a further object of the present invention to provide such a method that is employable by an individual commercial fisherman at sea. It is a yet further object to provide such a method that will gather data from many individual fishermen, combine the data to a single fishery-industry-related database, and generate reports useful to the commercial fishing industry. It is a still yet further object to provide such a method that will hold confidential certain data provided by an individual fisherman and to provide the individual fisherman with confidential reports useful to the fisherman's enterprise.
The individual fisherman making use of the method of the present invention brings a data-collection-and-storage-device with him on-board, generally on his commercial fishing vessel. The data-collection-and-storage-device can be of any type that is suitable for entering and storing data collected by fishermen, and can include general data input and storage devices and voice-rec
Bohan Thomas L.
Elisca Pierre E.
Mathers Patricia M.
Thristle Marine, LLC
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